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THE LAST YEARS AT HVEEN.
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had carried on business in one of those which Tycho got.[1] Though he frequently went to Copenhagen (as may be seen by the Meteorological Diary), nothing is known about his domestic arrangements there, nor do we know whether he really kept students or pupils. No observations were made at Copenhagen.

At Hveen the life and work continued as in previous years, and Tycho was still honoured and fêted by both compatriots and foreigners. Among his nearer friends, Vedel and Erik Lange paid him occasional visits, and early in 1590 the latter became engaged to Tycho's youngest sister, Sophia, who was a very frequent guest at Uraniborg, and who after Steen Bille's death (1586) was the only one of Tycho's relations who was capable of appreciating the work carried on there.[2] At the age of nineteen or twenty she had been married to Otto Thott of Eriksholm, in Scania, who died in 1588, leaving an only child, Tage Thott, during whose minority the young widow managed the property of Eriksholm. Here she devoted her leisure hours partly to horticulture (in which she must have excelled, since Rothmann, who paid her a visit during his stay in Denmark, thought her garden worthy of special praise to the Landgrave), partly to chemistry and medicine (which latter she made use of to relieve the poor), and especially to judicial astrology, to which she was greatly devoted, so that she is said to have always carried a book about with her in which the horoscopes of her friends were entered. She had several times met Erik Lange at Uraniborg, where he probably came to consult Tycho on matters relating to alchemy, on which pursuit he squandered his fortune.

  1. Danske Magazin, ii. p. 254 (Weistritz, ii. p. 183), where also is given Tycho's acknowledgment of his being bound to provide the dyer with a new house.
  2. About her observation of the lunar eclipse of 1573, see above p. 73.